Couples Adorn Bridges With Weighty Tokens of the Heart

'Lovelocks' Excite Passions in Paris: Symbol of Romance or Graffiti?

PARIS—Among the must-dos for visitors to the French capital: ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower, pay homage at the Louvre and seal your love with a Master Lock.

Paris's picturesque bridges over the Seine are heaving with padlocks, bike locks, handcuffs and other talismans of amour. Enamored visitors write their names on a lock, attach it to a bridge and throw the key into the river. Last fall, reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian, her boyfriend and their toddler son—followed by their camera crew—affixed "lovelocks" to the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge with a wooden walkway that spills out of the Louvre.

But, many Parisians are asking: What's love got to do with it?

The public displays of affection have unchained loathing among coldhearted locals. Some gripe that the locks are no better than graffiti, defacing the city's landmarks. Rust and pollution are concerns, too. Think of the keys littered on the bottom of the Seine "with cars and cadavers," says Sylvain Louradour, a baby sitter who lives near the Pont des Arts.

Others argue that the symbolism is all wrong. "The lock is a negative symbol of enclosure and imprisonment, the exact opposite of what love should be," says Esther Pawloff, a 48-year-old executive assistant here in Paris.

The locks have been turned into expensive contemporary art and melted down for the value of their brass. When thousands of locks were mysteriously removed one night in 2010, cynics suspected a spurned lover—or a padlock manufacturer looking for new business.

In recent months, the two original padlock bridges have become so overloaded that locks have spread to any bridge with a small grate. Couples have attached their love tokens to statues and monuments, causing damage that the city has had to repair.

The lovelock phenomenon came to Paris five years ago. Most observers date the phenomenon to an Italian teen novel titled "I Want You," published in 2006, featuring two Roman lovers who immortalized their bond on a bridge in the Eternal City and threw the key in the Tiber.

Readers copied the romantic gesture—until one of the bridge's lamp posts was so junked up with locks that officials worried that it would collapse. Padlocks have since sprouted from the Great Wall in China to the Brooklyn Bridge to the fence of a freeway overpass in Silicon Valley.

Paris, however, seems to have fallen for lovelocks more than any other city. They are entwined with its image as a romantic destination, fueling the tourist trade. For Valentine's Day, several hotels are advertising romantic getaways offering the possibility to partake in the padlock custom.

Some suspect tourism is the reason city hall backed down from a plan to remove and ban the locks to preserve Paris's architectural heritage. "It's very touchy to attack the phenomenon—because it draws tourists," says Joel Retailleau, a city official in the 6th arrondissement, where the Pont des Arts is located. Mr. Retailleau adds that Paris has more serious problems to deal with than padlocks on bridges.

The Paris mayor's office denies the city has bowed to tourism pressure. "The city's reputation as a capital for lovers draws on its history, its beauty and many other qualities that aren't linked to this recent trend," says Damien Steffan, a spokesman for the mayor. "We don't encourage it, but we don't outlaw it, either."

The Pont des Arts and the Pont de l'Archevêché, with the Notre Dame cathedral in the background, were the first two bridges to serve as padlock canvasses. "They must be on this bridge because it's historically for lovers, right?" asked Emma, a 22-year-old Londoner, admiring the padlocks on the Pont de l'Archevêché with her boyfriend.

The two bridges became a destination for seekers of eternal love because their chain-link grates are small enough to get a lock around. Enterprising souvenir hawkers peddle padlocks along the bridges. Personalized padlocks sell for as much as €20, or about $27.

Paris's tourism industry perpetuated the fad. The bateaux mouches barge-like boats that carry tourists up and down the Seine quickly added mention of lovelocks to their commentaries. "It's a Parisian tradition for lovers," says a guide for the Vedettes du Pont-Neuf tour boat company.

However, artists and scavengers see other value in love on the bridges. One night three years ago, soon after the city threatened to outlaw them, the locks were sawed off the Pont des Arts. The city denied any role. Conspiracy theorists suspected a jilted lover or enterprising padlock peddlers seeking new space for their goods.

Instead, the padlocks reappeared several weeks later in an art installation at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, France's leading art school. A student had chopped the locks off and turned them into a school project.

Undeterred, thousands of couples attached new ones. French contemporary artist Loris Gréaud had plenty of choice when he made his installation "Tainted Love" from Pont des Arts locks last year. Over the course of a week, he and his assistants culled 330 pounds of locks, filling their backpacks with the biggest and most lovingly engraved examples.

The first night, police arrested Mr. Gréaud. He was set free after he convinced them he was an artist. "I'm not a vandal or a thief," Mr. Gréaud says. The Paris police say it isn't illegal to cut locks as long as the bridges are unharmed.

Mr. Gréaud melted and molded the locks into 15 sculptural shards, priced at €675,000. He was exploring the paradox of transforming metal that was imbued with love into an unemotional geometric object, he said. François Pinault, a French art collector, bought all of them.

The city should leave the new custom alone, Mr. Gréaud says. "I always worry about any kind of ban so long as the bridge doesn't collapse from the weight of love."

In fact, the weight of love is becoming dangerous. Last week, it was the city's turn to clip locks. A cleanup crew removed five damaged grates from the Pont des Arts, temporarily replacing them with plywood planks to prevent people from falling into the Seine.

The city worries that the weight of the locks, as much as 330 pounds on a single grate, is making the bridge unsafe. Officials also attribute the danger to metal-resellers who cut the grates instead of the locks because the metal is thinner.

There is one possible solution that causes no pollution or damage to public property.

Master Lock, part of Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc.,FBHS-0.50% last year began offering "virtual" locks that it displays in an online gallery. In front of a shot of the Pont des Arts plastered with padlocks, the company advertises "no travel necessary."

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